Smith normal form and combinatorics

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Richard Stanley, MIT

Please note special day (Friday) and location (Fine 224).  If A is an m×n matrix over a PID R (and sometimes more general rings), then there exists an m×m matrix P and an n×n matrix Q, both invertible over R, such that PAQ is a matrix that vanishes off the main diagonal, and whose main diagonal elements e1,e2,,em satisfy ei|ei+1 in R. The matrix PAQ is called a \emph{Smith normal form} (SNF) of A. The SNF is unique up to multiplication of the ei's by units in R. We will discuss some aspects of SNF related to combinatorics. In particular, we will give examples of SNF for some combinatorially interesting matrices. We also discuss a theory of SNF for random matrices over the integers recently developed by Yinghui Wang.